iTunes Match: your questions answered

Apple's iTunes Match has launched, but the $25/year service isn't as …

Apple launched iTunes Match on Monday this week, making the service available to public users five months after its introduction and a few weeks later than expected. The service, meant to sync an entire music library over iCloud for easy access on other devices, has already thrown some users for a loop—Apple had to stop taking new subscribers yesterday thanks to too-high launch volume, and others were frustrated by Apple's limit of 25,000 non-iTunes-bought tracks.

The service seems to be back up and accepting new signups again, however, and plenty of users are finally getting the ball rolling on matching their iTunes libraries in the cloud. But the service isn't necessarily as straightforward as it seems, and there are plenty of questions floating around about how, exactly, Apple determines which songs to "match," which to upload, and which to leave behind. We put together the answers to some of the most common questions and problems we've seen so far in hopes of clearing up confusion about how iTunes Match does and doesn't work.

I have more than 25,000 songs in my iTunes library. I'm outraged!

Indeed, we've already heard a lot about iTunes Match's 25,000 song limit, but what does that really mean? As we wrote on Monday, the 25,000 limit only applies to tracks that were never purchased from iTunes, so if you have 10,000 tracks from iTunes (the economy thanks you, by the way) and 16,000 that you purchased from Amazon, ripped from CDs, or pirated, only those 16,000 would apply towards the limit, assuming iTunes would be able to match and/or upload them. (More on this in the next question.)

Still, some of you out there may actually have more than 25,000 tracks that never came from iTunes, meaning you're still subject to the hard limit. There are ways to get around this, but unfortunately, it's not as easy as going into a preference pane and checking some boxes for the playlists you'd like to match. As noted by Macworld, the answer involves creating an entirely new iTunes library to which you can copy the non-iTunes tracks you want to match and sync, while leaving out the ones you don't. (Be sure to turn off the option in your preferences that copies files to your iTunes Media folder when adding to the library—if you don't, you'll end up with multiple copies of your files, and your hard drive won't like you.) After performing this procedure, you should be able to switch back to your original iTunes library—the one with iTunes Match turned off—and the ones you matched from the new library will now reside in iCloud.

What do you mean "assuming iTunes would be able to match and/or upload them?" What's the criteria for music being matched or uploaded?

When iTunes Match goes through your library, it uses a three-step process in order to make the system more efficient. First, it scans your local song library, then it looks within the iTunes Store to see whether any of your songs match up with what's already on the server. If the songs are already on iTunes, the song is then deemed to be "matched," and it's not uploaded—instead, you simply get access to that song, via iTunes, on all of your devices. The third step only comes in if your songs are not matchable with anything that currently exists on iTunes—in this case, the songs are uploaded from your computer to iCloud, and they count against the aforementioned 25,000 song limit.

Still, there are certain scenarios in which your obscure songs may not be matched or uploaded to iCloud. For example, songs that are encoded at a low bit rate (some are theorizing 96Kbps, or 128Kbps) are simply ineligible for iTunes Match and won't be uploaded at all. And even more maddening, as tweeted by Macworld's Dan Moren, songs that are only in Smart Playlists (and not in normal iTunes playlists) are strangely not eligible and therefore won't be matched. Correction: My interpretation of Moren's tweet was misdirected; songs that are in smart playlists can indeed be matched. It's just the creation of a smart playlist for songs that are not ineligible doesn't seem to work.

Will iTunes Match keep my carefully crafted metadata when it matches or uploads a song?

This question came to me from Twitter yesterday, and from what I can tell, the answer is yes. Whether it's matched or uploaded, iTunes Match appears to keep whatever metadata you have added to your songs, which can then be copied back to your computer or other devices that you're syncing with. But, as MacRumors forum user Ninyabinez pointed out, it's important to keep in mind that any metadata you don't want will be copied to iCloud as well. So if you are an avid BitTorrent fan who downloads songs with clear metadata about the l337 h@ck3rZ who put the songs online in the first place, you may want to clear that information out (after you think about what you've done, of course).

Can I use iTunes Match on multiple computers to match/upload songs to the same iCloud account?

Yes. If you have different music on different machines (say, a home library and a work library), you can use iTunes Match on both in order to merge the songs into the same library within iCloud. You can then download those songs to the other computers, or access them from your iOS devices.

What if I rip my music at a higher bit rate than 256Kbps? Will iTunes Match replace them?

When iTunes Match matches a song on its servers, it makes that song available to your other devices in the typical 256Kbps iTunes Plus format. But this doesn't mean the original, higher-quality version will be replaced on the machine you're uploading from unless you specifically request it. iTunes Match won't delete any of your music—you have to be the person to delete it—so don't worry about lossless rips disappearing without your permission.

Sadly, iTunes Match won't match or upload most non-music media, such as movies, TV shows, audiobooks, or podcasts. (This almost surely has to do with licensing; Apple has licensing agreements with music studios to let their songs work with the service, but such a licensing agreement probably doesn't exist for those other types of content.) Music videos, however, are fair game, so if you're one of the four people who still downloads their own music videos instead of watching them on YouTube or Vevo, iTunes Match has you covered.

Anything else?

Have any other burning questions? Or perhaps you found the strange, obscure answer to your specific problem and you'd like to share it with the class? Let us know!

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

Is it possible to pay the $25, let it scan songs I'm not entirely sure of their correct metadata, and find the correct info and give me a higher quality iTunes copy? Do I lose access to these higher quality songs if I downloaded them before my subscription expires?

When a device requests a track that it doesn't already have, it downloads it and plays it.

But what about memory management on the device? Does it ever delete tracks to make room for more? If it doesn't, won't each device just fill up as you use it?

Presumably, if you had room for your entire library on your device, you'd just load it all up and you wouldn't need the cloud, so I'm assuming that most users will have less room on their device than the size of their music library.

What about DRM-protected itunes tracks? Will those be converted to non-DRM format?

Curious about this myself

They don't appear to be "converted" per se, or at least not converted to iTunes+ tracks in-place on my Mac. I do wonder if I could somehow re-download old purchases in the new iTunes+ DRM-free style though.

In fact, I noticed that my options to upgrade my library to iTunes+ tracks have disappeared. (Oddly, iTunes+ appears for a split-second while the iTunes Store loads, but then it disappears). So I'm apparently unable to upgrade my old iTunes music to iTunes+ music even if I wanted to do so.

I'm pretty sure you read that dmoren tweet wrong. I think he means "no match" as in "not included in the smart playlist". Have you tested your explanation? (It doesn't make much sense, because every track appears in the Music "playlist," and that's what iTunes Match works from.)

I turned iTunes Match off this morning. I download some MP3s of a radio show every morning. These tracks are considered ineligible, so I can not see a way to get them on my iPhone. Other than maybe changing the media type or converting the track to a higher bit rate. Even then, I don't care to upload these big files to iCloud everyday. iTunes won't sync my old playlists I put these tracks in. iTunes Match tracks replaced my synced library. So, I had to turn iTunes Match off just to get these ineligible tracks on my phone. I could use Dropbox, but I think it is dumb to waste bandwidth just because iTunes won't copy an MP3 over to my phone.

What about DRM-protected itunes tracks? Will those be converted to non-DRM format?

Curious about this myself

They don't appear to be "converted" per se, or at least not converted to iTunes+ tracks in-place on my Mac. I do wonder if I could somehow re-download old purchases in the new iTunes+ DRM-free style though.

In fact, I noticed that my options to upgrade my library to iTunes+ tracks have disappeared. (Oddly, iTunes+ appears for a split-second while the iTunes Store loads, but then it disappears). So I'm apparently unable to upgrade my old iTunes music to iTunes+ music even if I wanted to do so.

From what I've read it seems you can delete the matched songs from your library and now re-download them in the Plus format.The easiest way I can think of to do it is to create a smart playlist with all Music items that have an iCloud status of "Matched" and contain the word "protected" in the Kind field, then select all and remove from library (I'll back up my library before-hand--just in case). Then I should be able to re-download them in the upgraded format.

I turned iTunes Match off this morning. I download some MP3s of a radio show every morning. These tracks are considered ineligible, so I can not see a way to get them on my iPhone. Other than maybe changing the media type or converting the track to a higher bit rate. Even then, I don't care to upload these big files to iCloud everyday. iTunes won't sync my old playlists I put these tracks in. iTunes Match tracks replaced my synced library. So, I had to turn iTunes Match off just to get these ineligible tracks on my phone. I could use Dropbox, but I think it is dumb to waste bandwidth just because iTunes won't copy an MP3 over to my phone.

Wait. We can't sync our phone to iTunes if it has iTunes Match enabled?

What about DRM-protected itunes tracks? Will those be converted to non-DRM format?

</a href="http://www.wingsofreason.com/2011/11/15/how-to-upgrade-tracks-to-itunes-match-fast/">Yes it will</a>, though you'll have to re-download the songs to your library. <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/163620/2011/11/how_to_upgrade_tracks_to_itunes_match_fast.html>Macworld has an easy way</a> to do this.

Is it possible to pay the $25, let it scan songs I'm not entirely sure of their correct metadata, and find the correct info and give me a higher quality iTunes copy? Do I lose access to these higher quality songs if I downloaded them before my subscription expires?

Once you've downloaded the iTunes copy, you now have a non-DRMed 256Kbps AAC track. There's no way for Apple to go on to your machine and remove the file. You have it for good as long as you back up your iTunes library. If you don't renew your iTunes Match subscription, though, you probably won't be able to re-download matched songs from their servers (as you can any songs you've purchased from iTunes) once the subscription runs out.

One issue I've noticed is that you apparently can't have playlists on iOS devices that have Match enabled with anything but Matchable music in them. No podcast, no audiobooks, no video, no iTunes U. You can sync the content, and you can create playlists that contain them on iTunes and even use them to control what you sync, but the playlist itself doesn't get sync'ed nor can you create new playlists on iOS that contains anything but Matched music.

One thing to point out (although it's not likely to affect most folks) is that songs are only matched against your geo's store. For instance, if you're an American with a lot of international music, don't expect those tracks to match even if they're available in other country's stores. I was quite sad to discover this.

Important point that, strangely, nobody seems to bother saying explicitly: this is true iTunes Library sync, not just remote storage for your music. It's iCloud for iTunes in the same sense that the free service already offers iCloud for iCal. Changes to playlists, tags, play counts, etc. propagate to all connected libraries, both in iTunes and in iOS. (Ideally; it sounds like there are some bugs.)

Would have been nice if they hadn't restricted it to music, though. I get that they don't want to upload a bunch of videos. But they could at least provide the entries in the library, so that all playlists could be recreated 100% (even if some entries are greyed out). And since they already offer purchased TV/Movie re-downloads, surely those could be accessed via this nicer interface. And, for bonus points, they could even use Home Sharing to support manually copying over videos that are ineligible for cloud access.

So from what I read, does this mean I can sync my library, then delete local copies of the files to reduce the disk space I use locally, then just re-download the songs I want to play, thus saving me a few hundred MB of local storage? If so that's cool!

Important point that, strangely, nobody seems to bother saying explicitly: this is true iTunes Library sync, not just remote storage for your music. It's iCloud for iTunes in the same sense that the free service already offers iCloud for iCal. Changes to playlists, tags, play counts, etc. propagate to all connected libraries, both in iTunes and in iOS. (Ideally; it sounds like there are some bugs.)

Would have been nice if they hadn't restricted it to music, though. I get that they don't want to upload a bunch of videos. But they could at least provide the entries in the library, so that all playlists could be recreated 100% (even if some entries are greyed out). And since they already offer purchased TV/Movie re-downloads, surely those could be accessed via this nicer interface. And, for bonus points, they could even use Home Sharing to support manually copying over videos that are ineligible for cloud access.

I have a 64GB iPhone. Right now I can put my entire music library on it by using the "encode to 128kbps" feature when iTunes syncs with it.

What I'm hearing is that I absolutely DO NOT want to enable iTunes Match on my iPhone until Apple gets the feature to stop ruining syncing with non-Matched music/playlists/etc. Is this the right conclusion for now?

You say: And even more maddening, as tweeted by Macworld's Dan Moren, songs that are only in Smart Playlists (and not in normal iTunes playlists) are strangely not eligible and therefore won't be matched.

He's talking about a Smart Playlist bug, not an iCloud bug. When you set the criteria for a Smart Playlist, one of the values of "iCloud Status" is "Ineligible"... if you check the info on a track in your library that is not eligible for iCloud, it says "Not Eligible".

So a smart playlist that looks for ineligible tracks won't find them. Those tracks won't be matched or uploaded, of course, because they are ineligible for some unrelated reason. Smart Playlists don't affect iTunes Match at all. (I should know, I only have smart playlists.)

I have, however, occasionally seen iCloud-enabled smart playlists disappear when iTunes match is turned off. (Smart playlists are iCloud-enabled if they have the iCloud icon appear when you hover. This means they will show iCloud tracks as well as local tracks)

I'm wondering if iTunes match is a valid and easy way to share my music library across my and my wife's iPhones. We each have our own iCloud accounts. Is it a matter of having her log into my account and sync to her phone? Or will it prevent that?

So I read some where else that you can not download your music over 3g, and only over wifi?! So can you download tracks to your iphone while not connected to wifi?

Not true, it works fine over 3G.

Not from itunes but your matched content... I am playing with it on my friends iPhone in the office, and if I turn off wifi, any song that is not downloaded on the device is grey, and will not download... If I turn on wifi, the song will then download...